Watch the many explosions that led to SpaceX's successful rocket landings

SpaceX has now managed to land a total of 16 Falcon 9 first stage orbital boosters, and it's been a while since it lost one in the attempt. But things didn't always go so smoothly: It took a number of failures, resulting in what are cheekily known in the industry as 'rapid unscheduled disassembly events' (aka explosions) for SpaceX to refine its process.

Those attempts are now available to recap in full in one convenient fail video, created by SpaceX, which provides an amazing look at the price of progress when it comes to rocket science. We get some never before seen looks at all the ways the Falcon 9 first stage landing process went wrong before it started going so right, both at land and at sea aboard SpaceX's floating autonomous landing vessels.

Elon Musk himself posted this to Instagram and Twitter, as the SpaceX CEO continues to celebrate the failures that lead to eventual success. In space tech, as in other technology sectors, you have to crack a few eggs to make an omelette – but in SpaceX's case, those broken eggs just happen to result in spectacular explosions.